The official depositions of the people in Nicosia that night still leave the ignition of the conflict a mystery. A number of reports suggest the presence of an agent provocateur, never identified.
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At midnight, when the timeslip began, Saxifrage Russell was at a café midtown, Samantha Hoyle was on a tour of the city wall, and Frank Chalmers and Maya Toitovna had met in the western park where the speeches had been given a few hours before. Fighting had already broken out in the medina. John Boone went down the central boulevard to investigate the disturbance, as did Sax Russell from another direction. At approximately ten minutes into the timeslip, Boone was set upon by a group of between three and six young men, sometimes identified as “Arab.” Boone was knocked down and whisked into the medina before any witnesses could react, and an impromptu search turned up no sign of him. It was not until 12:27 A.M. that he was located by a larger search party in the town’s farm, and taken from there to the nearest hospital, on Boulevard of the Cypresses. Russell, Chalmers, and Toitovna helped to carry him—
Again a disturbance in the car drew Maya out of the text. Her skin was clammy, and she was shivering slightly. Some memories never really went away, no matter how you suppressed them: despite herself Maya remembered perfectly the glass on the street, a figure on its back on the grass, the puzzled look on Frank’s face, the so different puzzlement on John’s.
But those were officials, there at the front of the car, standing in the aisle and moving slowly down it. Checking IDs, travel documentation; and there were another two stationed at the back of the car.
Maya tapped off her lectern. She watched the three policemen move down the car, feeling her pulse knocking hard through her body. This was new; she had never seen it before, and it seemed the others on board hadn’t either. The car was hushed; everyone watched. Anyone in the car could have had irregular ID, and that fact made for a kind of solidarity in their silence; all eyes focused on the police; no one looked around to see who might be blanching.
The three policemen were oblivious to this observation, and almost seemed oblivious to the very people they interviewed. They joked among themselves as they discussed the restaurants of Odessa, and they moved from row to row rapidly, like conductors, gesturing for people to put their wrists up to the little reader, then cursorily checking the results, comparing for only a few seconds people’s faces to the photos called up by their IDs.
They came to Spencer, and Maya’s heart rate picked up. Spencer (if it was Spencer) merely held up a steady hand to the reader, apparently looking straight at the seat back in front of him. Suddenly something about his hand was deeply familiar— there under the veins and the liver spots was Spencer Jackson, no doubt of it. She knew it by the bones. He was answering a question now, in a low voice. The policeman with the voice-and-eye reader held it to Spencer’s face briefly, and then they all waited. Finally they got a quick line on the reader, and moved on. Two away from Maya. Even the exuberant businessmen were subdued, eyeing each other with sardonic grimaces and raised eyebrows, as if it were ludicrous to have such measures imported into the cars themselves. No one liked this; it was a mistake to do it. Maya took heart from that, and looked out the window. They were ascending the southern side of the Sink, the train gliding up the gentle grade of the piste over low hills, each higher than the next, the train always moving at the same speed, as if moving by magic carpet, over the even-more-magic carpet of the millefleur landscape.
They stood over her. The one closest wore a belt over his rust uniform jumper, with several instruments hanging from the belt, including a stun gun. “ID wrist please.” He wore an ID tag, with photo and dosimeter, and a label that said “United Nations Transitional Authority.” A thin-faced young emigrant of about twenty-five, though it was easier to guess that from the photo than the face itself, which looked tired. The man turned and said to the woman officer behind him, “I like the veal parmesan they do there.”
The reader was warm on her wrist. The woman officer was observing her closely. Maya ignored the look and stared at her wrist, wishing she had a weapon. Then she was looking into the camera eye of the voice-and-eye reader. “What is your destination?” the young man asked.
“Odessa.”
A moment’s suspended silence.
Then a high beep. “Enjoy your stay.” And they were off.
Maya tried to regulate her breathing, to slow it down. The wrist readers took pulses, and if you were over 110 or so they notified the applicator; it was a basic lie detector in that sense. Apparently she had stayed under the line. But her voice, her retinas; those had never been changed. The Swiss passport identity must be powerful indeed, overriding the earlier IDs when they were consulted, at least in this security system. Had the Swiss done that, or the Sabishiians, or Coyote, or Sax, or some force she didn’t know? Had she actually been successfully identified and let go, to be tracked so that she would lead them to more of the fugitive Hundred? It seemed as likely as the idea of overmastering the big data banks— as likely or more.